The Death of Muslim Immigrants in Britain and France

Abstract

Contemporary political discourse and public policy addressing issues relative to cultural plurality are always and everywhere worded in a language that speaks the weight of historical experience. France and Britain are no exception to the rule. Historically France’s response to cultural plurality and equality was traditionally couched in a terminology of citoyenneté, laicîté and republican integration, whereas in Britain the same problems were given expression in a language of race relations and multiculturalism.¹ Public policies in Britain in the 1960s departed from the ‘colour blind’ approach and focused on issues of discrimination based on ‘physical visible differences’. The adoption of the successive Race Relations Acts and the introduction in the National Census of 1991 of an ethnic question, and in 2001 of a voluntary question on religion, illustrate this shift in public policies. France has never adopted, at least officially, such a stance. Issues relating to ethnic diversity were and are still expressed in a vocabulary which dodges the question of difference and discrimination and which portrays French society through the lenses of equality. Yet national and international development gave the religious dimension a new focus in both countries, putting religious diversity, and more particularly Islam and Muslims, at the forefront of the public debates.